>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: sally mann is one of america's preeminent photographers. for three decades, she has captured images that are hunting disturbing, and romantic all at once. her 1992 series, called "imme diate family" created 10 years it featured her children at home on their virginia farm. these photos deemed a great work of art outraged some for their composition and nudity. sally writes about that moment as well as her life and work in a new book called "hold still: a memoir with photographs." i spoke with sally mann for a

rare and candid conversation in new york city's gallery. so what brought you to say rather than taking pictures, i am going to write about the taking of pictures and my own life? sally: well, what brought me there was the massey lectures. i was invited to deliver the lecture at harvard. i thought it was mistake. i thought it had been mis addressed, the envelope. it was complete mystification. but anyway, they are three lectures, an hour each. they are scholarly, academic lectures. it took me a year to say yes. and it was three years down the road. i had plenty of time to think about it. charlie: this is a culmination of a life in photography. sally: yeah, it is, but it turned out to be more than that

. when i went to write those massey lectures, i went so far back in time to study the whole genetic thread that brought me there. i went up to the attic, like i guess everybody does, and dug out the old boxes. yeah, yeah, the pictures and the letters and the dried boutonnieres and the ship's manifest. all that stuff. charlie: you seem in your work always to be interested in life and death and memory and history and place. sally: yeah. that may be because i am a southerner. you know about that. charlie: i do. we like to tell stories. sally: yeah, we do. charlie: and you do it with the camera. i do it with voice. sally: yeah. charlie: when did this love affair with photography begin? sally: pretty early, really.

17? charlie: did your dad give you your first camera? sally: he did. he had a like of it. he taken a trip around the world in 1937, maybe 1939. and he handed it to me with virtually no explanation, no this is how you load the film. you remember all that stuff. i started taking pictures, and it was an instant love affair. charlie: what was it? sally: what was it? just ecstatic. the joy of looking at a negative. the fixers dripping down your arms and you hold it up to the light, and it is magic. it's still magic. charlie: it is that more than taking the picture. sally: maybe, because you take a picture and you so fervently pray you have got the 10th of the second you thought you got. and so many times you do not. you get the 10th of the second either side of the one you hope

you got. really, it is when you see the negative that the moment happens. and there is nothing like that moment. i have said other times. it is almost sexual in its intensity. you are just ecstatic. charlie: do you would see it instantly? sally: yeah. even a negative form, which is reversed, you can tell right away, because it has the solicited portions and the right feel to it. you just know it. charlie: and you like black and white? sally: i do. charlie: why? sally: it's harder. that is not why i like it. but it also makes you get right to the essence of what you're taking the picture of. you are not distracted by the color. color is just an entirely different process, way of thinking. charlie: but the interesting

thing is you live on a farm, which is full of color. green grass, blue skies and forest and everything. sally: it's funny. the way my mind works, i see everything in black and white. i also start seeing other things, like right now i see you , in an 8x10 rectangle. charlie: god help me. [laughter] sally: you start blocking out things. that is important part of taking pictures, is the ability to isolate what you're concentrating on. like sometimes when i'm reading a book, i have this -- and i do not know if everyone does this -- it will describe the scene and i will see the scene in my mind as an eidetic vision but i will see it as a black and white photograph. complete with burning and dodging. i will say well the sky should be darker. there you are in william faulkner and clinton is about to throw himself off the bridge. and a insane well, the river should be dark.

-- and i am saying the river should be dark. charlie: back to putney. sally: oh, gosh. ok. [laughter] charlie: somebody once said the reason she likes photography is you like the dark room, because that is the place you and her boyfriend could get together. sally: yeah. get together, a euphemism. [laughter] there was that. yeah no question about that. charlie: you took your first intimate photographs there. sally: i did. and of course, immediately got in trouble for it. i got in trouble for everything at putney. i was a complete fallen minx. i was a bad girl. but the picture got me in trouble. for once, i was innocent. it was a completely innocent picture. but it involved nudity. charlie: we will talk more about that. [laughter] sally: ok, maybe not too much. charlie: because this is -- of

life. and there are so many things that can people those pictures as part of who you are as a photographer and having to do with family with landscapes and history. but you wanted to go back to where you came from. you wanted to go back to virginia. sally: i never left virginia. just for the briefest time. and the whole time i was miserable. pretty much. i missed the embrace of the mountains and the kindness of the people. yeah, the whole sweetness of the land. vermont just did not do it for me. charlie: the older i get, the more i appreciate kindness. sally: no getting. -- no kidding. and isn't it funny that the south that is so known for so many unkind acts -- violence and prejudice -- can have within its boundaries just the sweetest kindest people? most generous. charlie: you get a job at washington lee.

sally: oh, briefly. as a photographer. charlie: was it the lewis house? sally: it was the law school. i photographed that. charlie: you did an exhibition. sally: you have done your homework! good grief. charlie: but it is you, it is your life. these photographs on top of a life. sally: a big pile of them. charlie: especially your life. family is central. you go back to a place where your father was a general practitioner. your mother ran a book store. sally: mm-hmm. charlie: your husband is a lawyer? sally: yes, but he was a blacksmith for the first 10 years of our marriage. charlie: he loves horses? sally: he still does. he just can't ride unfortunately. charlie: but immediate family. 1990? thereabouts. sally: the book came out in 1992.

i started the pictures and maybe, i said, 1984. charlie: how do you measure getting better? sally: i think it is sort of a visceral thing. charlie: you can see the difference in sally mann circa 2015 and sally mann circa 2000 15 years? sally: yeah, yeah. again, i don't know that it's an intellectual process. although i may ask myself intellectual questions. i think the difference is that i used to be taking pictures to save things. the impulse was to either take pictures to save some thing or to try and see what something would look like when it was photographed. it was an aesthetic exercise. now it's a lot more important to me to actually say something, as

opposed to save something. i'm working from an intellectual construct, and i'm trying to use the photographs in service to a concept, which i did not start out that way. i did not start the family pictures to talk. they were just sort of -- i was taking pictures since the kids were around and gradually a construct was built around that. charlie: that is what immediate family was about. they were just around, lying around. sally: they were documentary in origin. they grew less so. charlie: there grew to become what? sally: they grew to have a narrative around them. an aesthetic, and an intellectual narrative. and a metaphorical implication. they got much more complicated. charlie: did you know what you were doing? sally: no. i think i had begun to make a commitment to using the

commonplace to somehow make images that were resonant and revelatory in a universally, i don't know, a static and lyrical way. and what could be more commonplace than children, rug rats? charlie: your own children at a cabin. sally: yeah. i worked the 12 year olds before that. charlie: they were 10 at the time. sally: the 12-year-olds were 12. you mean the kids? they were not even born that. four -- four they were infants. charlie: what were you telling us? because on the one hand, it is all of the themes of what it means to be young, playing jumping in the water.

on the other hand, people read into themes of loneliness, quiet sexuality. sally: people read unbelievable things into it. that is what was so shocking to me. i knew they were not without undertones. i knew they were not simple snapshots. but some of the ways they were interpreted were shocking to me. charlie: you knew there would be controversy. sally: i didn't. but i found out soon enough. i say was i was blind-sided and i was -- charlie: by all the things people said. charlie:sally: yeah. charlie: and accused you of because you are photographing , naked children. on the other hand, people consider them beautiful and brilliant and it marked you as a photographer. people said a great photographer has just appeared. that was the beginning of sally

mann's public reputation. sally: that is true. charlie: i'm amazed the things you did -- you clearly were conscious of making sure you had them talk to psychologists. you were concerned about not showing photographs they did not like. sally: right. i gave them them editorial control. in as much as a child can have editorial concern, and that is the question editorial discernment. and that's the concern so many people had, was how could they know? but they did. they were visually sophisticated kids. we talked about the pictures. charlie: what was the conversation? sally: well, you know, do you like this? what do you think this picture says? does this picture say something about you are -- you are not comfortable with? charlie: what did your husband say? sally: the same. charlie: this is a close family.

sally: pretty close. charlie: this is a family that has no secrets between them. sally: i would imagine there are a few secrets, but we are close family even now. or especially now maybe. charlie: now they are all successful adults. how do they see these photographs? sally: i usually answer that by saying you should ask them. [laughter] i mean, they are all in their 30's. charlie: maybe i will do that. sally: in fact, virginia is right over there. i suggest you consult her. i think that they're, they're proud of them. i remember -- virginia wanted to give immediate family to her math teacher for christmas. even then, yeah. charlie: so they understood or they appreciated. sally: i think they understood it. that is the argument i make. i'm sure child psychologists will take issue with that. some. ♪

♪ charlie: here is virginia. tell me about what it was like

to live in a household where you had a mother who was obsessed by photographing that which she knew best, her family. virginia: i think one of the things you may not appreciate about the pictures is that we were incredibly lucky to have a mother who was at home all the time. we got to work with her, and we found a way to work with her. it was something that was collaborative. even though she was obsessed it was our reality. charlie: she was taking pictures of your reality? virginia: exactly. charlie: you felt collaborative. this is about us. we are part of this. and if we don't want to be part of this we do not have to be , part of this. did you want to be a photographer? was there any sense, i would love to do what mom does? virginia: no. [laughter] first of all, i never showed any aptitude for it. but i never really wanted to go into anything involving photography or art at all.

charlie: are you and your brother and sister different in terms of how you view all this? virginia: i do not think so. i think we are all incredibly proud of this body of work and proud of what mom has achieved. but it is also something we feel we have achieved. we have been there through so much of it. sally: it is collaborative. virginia: every body of work is collaborative. we have gone through choosing which pictures will be in the show. we have gone to the openings. charlie: even if they were pictures of landscapes? virginia: i do not know how much of a say we got. we would give our opinions. she did not raise a shy child. sally: i am not so sure about that. i do listen to you. virginia: we want to get -- we will not get final veto. sally: maybe not. charlie: this made her famous,

and you to a degree. did it have, when you look back at it, and impact on you? virginia: i think it did. i think it did. it is hard to say because i was quite young when the book came out in 1992. 7 or 8 when the book came out. it was something i adapted to quickly. for jesse and emma, they felt the shift more severely than i did. charlie: shift in? virginia: in our life. we were suddenly traveling the world. we were known in a way we had never experienced before. sally: but i think there were moments where it is character building. that is how used a sort of -- virginia: it presented its own unique challenges. sally: there you go. virginia: i think that there are people, i find, i would say the biggest thing is i get protective of our privacy.

so people who find out who i am, and there's this debate, how do the kids turn out? i do not think that is anybody's business. i am who i am. i have my own identity. so, we've gone through all of that, but it just has shaped who we are and it was character building. charlie: character building because it added a dimension to your life you had to face? virginia: exactly. but everyone has their challenges. ♪ charlie: after "immediate family," sally moved on. for two decades, she has been exploring themes of place, history, and mortality. i ask her where she finds her inspiration. sally: it is funny, because the way it works for me is that i do not really make a decision about what i want to do next. it comes to me. it is like a sort of hidden ardent lover you keep to the side and it calls to you. while i was taking the family

pictures i had this desire to take landscapes. i know this sounds completely hokey but it was true. i would have my camera set up and i would rotate the camera away from the pictures. i am thinking again, 8 x 10, i would find these beautiful images on that milky ground glass of the camera. i was seduced by landscapes. i was conspicuously available for seduction because of the fact the kids were leaving home about that time. charlie: you were available for seduction. [laughs] i am available for seduction of any landscapes want me. here i am. sally: there you go. and they did. [laughter] charlie: but it is part of your love for the south because you write about that in this memoir. sally: yes. in fulsome prose. charlie: yes, and then there is gigi. you write about her.

sally: very important to me. charlie: in what way? sally: i read in a book that i was raised kind of as a feral child. my parents, this 1950's thing. very hands off. i do not know what your childhood was like -- charlie: much like yours. sally: i would be gone all day long and no one would look for me. charlie: i had complete freedom. i could go and come. i had no curfew, nothing. sally: yeah, me too. charlie: at no age. they trusted me. my parents trusted me. sally: i think my parents just did not care. i do not think it was trust. [laughter] charlie: oh, no. maybe they knew i could take care of myself is what it was. sally: i had this unneutered beagle and for miles we would , go. i would come home and my mouth would be blackened. do you remember tar on the road?

i would chew the tar when i would get hungry. can't have done me any good. but no one would care. i would come home and they'd wipe the tar off my mouth. charlie: i got ahead of myself. deep south was 2005. sally: you probably know this better than i do. charlie: that is where you do the landscapes of the south and the battlefields. sally: after that. emmit's hill was linked in with the deep south pictures. then the battlefields. i don't know. i'm sure you have got it on a piece of paper somewhere. charlie: it shows the evolution, too. what remains was 2003. sally: there you go, ok. charlie: there it was your greyhound. what was it about? was it about dying? was it about understanding cap and what -- understanding death?

sally: it started out that way sort of as a documentary impulse. she died, and i could not bear to leave her. so i had her skinned. then i took the body and buried it. it ended up decomposing in this almost constellation of little bones. and i went from there. it was an odd leap, but i began asking the question about the landscape in which she was buried. then there was a death on the farm. charlie: you get engaged by something like that, and boy you go on a rampage. sally: i'm a little terrier-like. charlie: you are. [laughter] charlie: then because of your dead greyhound, you get interested in other dead bodies and decomposing bodies. what is your camera telling us? sally: i don't know. charlie: you just wrote a memoir about it. sally: i know right. i am like the dancer pavlova who did that wonderful dance.

when she was done, all of the interviewers asked what was it , about? she said, if i could tell you i would not have danced about it. charlie: the book is part of you thinking about all of this and to find some meaning in it. sally: it is a huge translation. usually it is enough to take the picture and put them on the wall and assume that if you are a good enough artists, your meaning is plain. but to then to have to make the transition from visual art to written words it was quite , interesting. it's a whole different way of thinking, to be able to talk about your work. and not so easy it turned out. charlie: john grisham said "in hold still, sally mann wraps her prose around the pictures revealing a fine talent for writing."

sally: bless his heart. charlie: were words hard for you as you are writing all this to match the pictures? the pictures spoke so intuitively and insightfully. you show us the hard reality or the beautiful reality. sally: thank you. i try to. charlie: but are you miusing on mortality and death and what happens, what remains? because that is what you titled it. "what remains." sally: you mean that show? yeah. you do ask that question. it is like laurie anderson saying, i feel like a library had burned down when i lost my father. you do. it is sort of a proustian notion of what finally is memory about and what does remain, how to preserve the moment?

can you preserve the moment? is there such a thing as an afterlife, so to speak? charlie: antietam was in that, "what remains." the largest number of casualties ever in american war on one day. you end, because you go back to the living. you went back to the close-ups of your children. to say there's hope and a future. sally: exactly. the vitality and the fearlessness of those faces. that is what i love about those pictures of the children -- the faces. charlie: you are going from death to life. sally: you certainly are. the negative to the affirmative. yeah. charlie: and then in 2009, there is "proud flesh." sally: it may be one of my favorite bodies of work and one of the toughest. charlie: because it is painful for you?

sally: it is a difficult -- any time you make a picture of a vulnerable subject -- and larry is vulnerable. he has got muscular dystrophy. so whole parts of his body have lost all their muscle. his look perfect arm -- his bicep is no bigger than my wrist. he has no muscle. charlie: that is what muscular dystrophy does to you. and you wanted to do this as hard as it is. sally: it is harder for him, though. it was hard for me, but it is harder for him. when you have a subject who is willing to put themselves out like that, and completely unashamed and completely willing to be in a picture that comes at the expense of his vanity. vulnerability, all of that.

all pornographic portraiture -- that's the risk always. no matter how public a figure you are. how used you are to being photographed you are always at , the mercy of the photographer. we hold all the cards and the power. charlie: so, therefore, can we see trust in him? sally: i should say. he does trust me. there are pictures i have taken that made me just ache for him. and i would say, are you sure you want me to show these pictures? and he said yeah. in a certain sense, that measure of discomfort is worth it to him for the sake of what we like to think of as a piece of art. charlie: what was his response to them? he saw the book? sally: yeah. i'm still photographing him. he's still willing to do it.

more than willing. he believes that what we make together is important. charlie: been a good marriage. sally: 45 years. the last time we sat across from each other it was 34 years. so, we have managed to put in another 11. wait, i'm not so good with math. yeah, 11. charlie: 34 to 45 is 11. sally: thank you. [laughter] sally: i was frantically working my fingers. you saw my math scores. they are in the book. charlie: you chose the right profession. sally: i did. charlie: you chose the right profession, or did it choose you? sally: i think probably that. yeah, it is a demanding mistress. charlie: when did the realization you are an artist come to you? you are not just a photographer. not that a photographer cannot just be art, but it is more than taking pictures.

sally: i was going bifurcated between writing and photography. i loved both of them. i wanted to be a poet, but how do you earn a living as a poet? hard to do. i guess early on. i did not think of it quite that way. i went around wearing a rakish beret and smoking and all that. i wanted to be an artist. i wanted to look like an artist. the left bank of lexington. [laughter] yeah, i mean, i wanted to be an artist but i was not entirely sure i could pull it off. ♪

charlie: and you have not gone and reached out to every new technology that comes down the pike. have you? sally: i'm borrowing a little from the digital. i knew this was coming. yeah. i can't ignore it. charlie: because it gives you power. sally: i can do more things. charlie: you can tell your story better. sally: yeah, i can get what i want better. i'm not sure i'm going to give up film or print. i love it. charlie: it's your liquid. sally: that and bourbon. [laughter] charlie: i knew that was the reason i love you so much.

silver and bourbon. that could be the next memoir. sally: that is a good title. don't you dare steal it from me. charlie: why did you title this "hold still"? sally: well, i pulled it out of the text. there is one point where i am describing the feeling of taking a picture. if you're going hold still. , it is italicized because it is that important. but someone said it should be titled "hold still, sally mann," because i am so hummingbird-ish. charlie: you are tough. you are tough, tough on yourself and tough on your art, demanding a lot of yourself. you live in a cocoon of family but you attack the world.

sally: i am painfully insecure. i have this self-doubt that masquerades as vanity. other people see my career as one success piled onto another. i see myself as reeling from botch to botch, failure to failure. charlie: where have you failed in your life? sally: oh god, don't ask. charlie: i'm asking. sally: i don't know. i never think it is good enough. i look back. i'm obsessively sensibly reshooting things, trying for perfection. in piety and perfection. those are the goals. charlie: would you recognize perfection if you saw it? sally: there are a few pictures that i would say are perfect. perfect. i would not change a thing. charlie: what do they contain? sally: mmm. that's sort of, that ineffable, something je ne sais quois.

what a copout, right? charlie: but i have asked opera stars in a long career, are there moments onstage where you knew you had nailed it? you had put it together in a way you cannot even remember how you did it. you just know that night and that song you were there. sally: and they say? and what to they say it feels like? charlie: i remember beverly sills talking about it. she said, you just wanted to hold it. you want to hold it. sally: yeah. but of course it's completely , ephemeral. transcendent but ephemeral at the same time. fleeting, absolutely. charlie: there was a great story

of laurence olivier who had just delivered a great shakespearean performance. and they went backstage -- sally: among many. charlie: went backstage to congratulate him. some fellow actors. he had his head in his hands. they said, larry, this was unbelievable, never been better. do you know how good you are? he said, i know, but i do not know how. sally: he did not know how he did it? oh, yeah. the muse. that is when the muse steps in. charlie: do you believe in that? because you believe in exactly the opposite. sally: we went through this. [laughter] sally: i think that -- i said to you one time that i do not believe in talent. and you said you did, right. so, i thought we should settle this once and for all, because i do think there is a weighted sensibility, a privileged

sensibility. and maybe that is what talent is. i think it is so vanishingly small in the scale of things. charlie: i do, too. can i tell you i have come mostly to where you are? sally: good, we have changed places. charlie: after doing this for so long and talking to so many people of enormous talent -- sally: or what you think is talent. charlie: what i think is talent. they always talk about effort. how hard it was. sally: those 10,000 hours. charlie: they all do. athletes artists. sally: so, are you convinced now? charlie: i am more convinced. because my life experience is that too. you are good most of all because of the labor that goes into it. sally: the tenacity. you just have to do it and do it until you get it right. charlie: i wonder sometimes if

-- that what essentially is true is that a select few can reach that kind of greatness. and those select few are those who had something special, had something special that they put in the 10,000 hours and put in the hard work and the searing sense of this is not right. this is not right. it is not there yet. sally: but i do think there is some privileged sensibility. we are not talking about proust or mozart. those guys really are geniuses. we are talking about the rest of us who are making ordinary art. we are just regular people who work really hard. and make ordinary art. charlie: when people saw you they knew they were looking at something special. they don't see what goes into it. they see what comes out of it. sally: i know. isn't that true with everything? every book you hold up when you're interviewing someone is five years of their lives? charlie: exactly. sally: i remember robert frank

was talking about he lived in an apartment that was a courtyard across from de kooning. he used to see de kooning pacing back and forth, trying to put painting on canvas, and he realized as a photographer all here to do was hold the viewfinder to his face. and find the decisive moment. when you are a writer, or a painter so much more difficult. that's why it took five years. because i had to conjure the whole thing up from scratch. photography is all about choices, right? but writing is about choices too, but you have to create the choices. they are not out there in the world for you. charlie: do you want to do it again? sally: i don't think so. charlie: you have nothing left to say? sally: god knows. look at that -- 500 pages.

charlie: but it is 2015. and you talk about everything. you talk about you, influences on your life how photography can , change the world. sally: i think it can. charlie: how so? sally: i had a big argument with eugene richards the other day. i think he is brilliant. i always thought he was billion -- was brilliant. and i made that sweeping announcement that i thought photography could change the world. he said you're crazy. he has been making the photographs that i think have changed the world. i think it is historical fact it has changed -- of course. it stopped the vietnam war. charlie: it did. sally: it change the course of the civil war, not to interrupt you. charlie: civil rights, selma. it was photographs and moving images of brutality and of violence that said to people in power -- sally: we cannot have this in america. that is going on right now.

i was walking down the street yesterday. charlie: it is a different role -- different world because everybody has a camera. sally: that was what i was going to say. i was walking down the street in new york city, and a cabbie was having a fight with a woman on park avenue. i guess it was a standard new york argument. there were three people with their cameras out videotaping. it was not even a fist. it was yelling from the windows. i thought, wow. don't tell me photography does not make a difference. right there, it probably prevented something. charlie: just look at something like instagram, how obsessed we are. people would rather get a photograph that some text any day of the week. sally: so, what you think that is going to do to photography? charlie: it is changing politics . social media has a real impact. what you are talking about and you see that globally. we're looking at, as we tape this, we are looking at a catastrophe of grave, more than

so far 3000 people killed by an earthquake in nepal. sally: so, it is that many now? charlie: close to it. sally: oh, my god. charlie: you look at a situation where people have to respond. it clearly has power and influence. yet it also contains beauty. a configured you, as paintings can, as film can, to a place that only your mind can imagine. sally: surely enough, a photograph is limited just in terms of what it can conjure. we are talking what it can do politically, but i was thinking as we were driving over today, i was thinking, the difference the way photographs work with memory is so much different then other things. going back to proust, the idea

of the deck alleged, curling yellow photograph is so one-dimensional. and yet, there is proust with his madeleine, it's got shape and form and detail, and it is three-dimensional. photography is an interesting and complicated concept. the varied ways in which it's used. charlie: here is the power though. and this is the power in your darkroom. you choose what we see. sally: right. charlie: i see see this all the time. there will be a picture on the cover of a newspaper, and then there will be a different picture inside. in that case and editor chose. but you chose first. you show us the images we are allowed to see. you made the first choice. sally: yeah. have you ever studied contact sheets? the famous picture of the little boy? charlie: i haven't studied it,

but i am aware of it. sally: it is fascinating. there is this kid in central park. he happens to be holding a hand grenade. 11 pictures are ordinary. just a kid standing there. and then just one picture where he makes this terrible grimace his hands are clutched and that is the picture she chose. but when you look at contact sheets and study why people chose the pictures they did, it's fascinating. charlie: there is a story of a "new york times" reporter coming to photograph you and basically was having trouble was nervous. worried to death about it. i've got to photograph the great sally mann. sally: she was so good. charlie: but she was worried. she took pictures and you said finally, just shoot. that is what you told her. quit worrying, shoot. sally: yeah.

and she has one of those modern cameras where you just push it -- it is like a machine gun. charlie: what do you think of those cameras? sally: i'm beginning to see the utility of them. how can you go wrong? monkey at a typewriter. you just push the button. just shoot. charlie: which is what andre breton once told me. point and shoot. sally: it is just that simple. do not worry about it, charlie. you will get a good picture. charlie: that is the point. all of this stuff of being able to frame it. but at the same time, she said she would look at all the pictures and they were all out of focus, but there was one that you saw of a hand. you said that's the one. sally: we said it in unison. we were scrolling through thousands of pictures. boom, just like that, yeah. charlie: let me talk about family, about gigi.

tell me more about her. sally: there was a gigi for a lot of people of our generation in the south. they were extremely important. reynolds price wrote a lot about the importance of that person. in particular, if you are a little odd ball or truman capote-like or difficult like i was. i'm sure you were not an easy child, either, right? and i don't know how your parents were. in my case, they were not particularly available to me. they had other things to do. and she was all the things. charlie: let me talk about your family, your father and mother the legacy. you tell me. sally: a third of the book is devoted to my father. he deserves every page. he is one of the most complex

, interesting -- charlie: among other things an atheist. sally: he was that. that is a difficult thing to be in the south. but he was also contemptuous of television, and he was very much an intellectual and an art lover. a foodie and a sophisticate on almost every level. charlie: probably read "the new yorker." sally: you bet he did. and harbors and "the new republic." "the new york times" and "the washington post." they were intellectuals. charlie: was he happy? sally: i am not entirely sure. he was a medical doctor, but he gave up to be a medical doctor and to be a devoted one, he gave up a great deal. charlie: he gave up what you are. sally: he gave up literature and

art. and those were the two things he loved. very interesting. charlie: and he knew it. sally: yeah, he did know it. and i think there was this poignancy of squandered genius about him always. charlie: you're more him than your mother's daughter? sally: other than i look almost identical to my mother, it is shocking. maybe less so now. charlie: genetics. sally: genetics, yeah. i tell the story in the book that i was walking down the street in boston and a man asked asked if i was kin to elizabeth evans. i said i am her daughter. charlie: you think about all these relationship, things that you have taken pictures of. i assume gigi at one point made

you interested in the legacy of slavery. sally: she made me aware of it but not overtly. she was very circumspect. it was when i went to putney that i was introduced to falconer by a black man named to jeff campbell. even as he handed it to me, he must have known that he was opening the door to some very difficult questions. in fact those questions just strolled right in. charlie: what haven't you done? what questions have you not answered through photography for yourself? what do you owe us you have not done? sally: i'm working on this project -- i touch on in the book. and it is all devoted to gigi. it is a testimonial perhaps to gigi in her importance, but i'm working on patricia blackman.

it is bigger than that, though. i am working on the legacy of slavery and the south, which i think is one of the most under discussed and profound phenomena. and in the whole united states. but particularly in the south. and i am focusing on the nature of what kept the slaves alive. what kept their hope alive. focusing on the nat turner rebellion. charlie: how will you do this? sally: you would think i would have an answer to this, but i do not quite know yet. i'm photographing the dismal swamp and the rivers in the neighborhoods of nat turner's rebellion. because that is where he was going. who's going to the dismal swamp, which offered refuge to particularly desperate slaves because they would attract them. -- they wouldn't track them.

charlie: fear of alligators. sally: fear of everything. that place is awful. now they discovered these villages. so i'm photographing those. it is fascinating the whole , question of how slavery has affected the south, which is a kind of large topic. so black men, rivers -- i'm photographing little churches, the importance of religion. charlie: how about courthouses? sally: you know, that is a good idea. charlie: are you serious? sally: i am serious. charlie: because it is about a certain kind of justice. sally: yeah, exactly. courthouses. i was thinking of song, too, how that -- and the night sky. surely the night sky was of critical importance to escape and communication. anyway, who knows? charlie: because you have looked

at history so much, and because you have looked at death and decay so much, do you feel any sense of mortality and rushing to finish so many things that you -- sally: do i ever. all i have to do is look in the mirror. i do not have to look at death and decay. charlie: what do you see when you look in the mirror? sally: i'm shocked every time i do. charlie: how would you like to be on television for 25 years? sally: i can only imagine. it is bad enough being on television for 25 minutes. when they brought the screen over, i was aghast. [laughter] that can't be me. charlie: there is this sense of urgency to do a lot. sally: there is. absolutely. no i'm frantic. , i don't waste any time. i don't waste time. i work all the time. i never leave home.

i mean, i just stay honed in on what's ahead. i'm sure you do, too. it is the only way. charlie: i was thinking about it. in the end, it's love and work. freud and shakespeare, whoever deserves credit. friends, love of the world around you. and at the same time, it is work. to find your place. find a place you can stand -- sally: and leave your mark. charlie: and that connects you to your father. sally: yeah. charlie: thank you for this. sally: thank you. charlie: my thanks to my colleague at cbs for the hard work on the sally mann conversation and edit. ♪

>> good morning. i am shery ahn. this is trending business. here is what we are watching this morning. rise and fall. stocks in shanghai heading for more declines. concerns about a government clampdown on margins trading. state of emergency. eu leaders call a crisis as

greece lurches closer to a next it from the euro -- closer to an exit from the euro. time has run out for greece to get aid money without an extension. the funding is also under question. and democracy deadlock. hong kong bracing for a new wave of turmoil after lawmakers voted down beijing's proposal for elections. they will be asking what comes next. you can let us know what you think of the top stories by following me on twitter. do not forget to include the hashtag trending business. here is david with a look at the markets. david: it has been a good day so far but a bad week.